Amarpreet Sawhney, PhD, is the Chairman of the Board and was the Chief Executive Officer of Augmenix from 2008 to 2014. Since 2006 Dr. Sawhney has been the President, Chief Executive Officer and co-founder of Ocular Therapeutix, a biopharmaceutical company. He was elected as Chairman of the Board in June 2014. In addition, he is a general partner of Incept, LLC, an intellectual property holding company. Previously, Dr. Sawhney founded Confluent Surgical and served as its President and CEO prior to its acquisition by Covidien plc. He also was a technology founder of Focal, Inc., a biopharmaceutical company acquired by Genzyme Corporation, and a founder of Access Closure, Inc., acquired by Cardinal Health in 2014.

Dr. Sawhney’s innovations are the subject of over 100 issued and pending patents. He holds M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in chemical engineering from the University of Texas at Austin, as well as a B.Tech. in chemical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi India.

Tasneem Dohadwala, MBA, is a Founding Partner of Excelestar Ventures, an all-equity investment firm that has a diverse portfolio of healthcare, high-tech, energy and real-estate assets that spread across the globe. Previously, Tasneem worked in financial services on the sell-side at Lehman Brothers. She currently sits on the board of Biomass Engineering Limited, Greenwich Carbon Oklahoma, Noor Findik, Helios Ingredients, Zettics and BKPPL. Furthermore, she sits on the investment committee of Catalyst Healthcare Ventures. She also is the President of the HBS Angels.

Tasneem graduated magna cum laude from Wellesley College with a major in Sociology and minor in Mathematics and Harvard Business School with second-year distinction. She is very active in several healthcare and educational philanthropic efforts.

Pat Campbell, PhD, CTO: Pat Campbell has over 17 years with the Incept family of companies. He started with Augmenix in 2007. Prior to Augmenix, Pat was the VP of Research and Development at Confluent Surgical, an Incept LLC Company. Previously Pat worked at Focal, Inc., Advanced Cardiovascular Systems, and Symbion, Inc.

Pat holds a PhD and Masters in Bioengineering, and a BS in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Utah. Pat also has over 13 issued U.S. patents.

John Pedersen, MBA, President and CEO: John Pedersen joined Augmenix in 2014. Previously he was a Senior Healthcare Advisor for two Healthcare Private Equity Funds – The Gores Group and The Pritzker Group. Prior to this, John was President of the Urology and Women’s Health Division at Boston Scientific. During his 15 years at Boston Scientific, he also served as President of the Peripheral Interventions and the Neurovascular Divisions. Prior to Boston Scientific, he was a Senior Engagement Manager at McKinsey & Co.

John earned an MBA from The Harvard Graduate School of Business Administration and an AB degree from Princeton University. He currently serves on the Board of Directors of Therakos and Clinical Innovations, two privately held medical device companies.

Fred Khosravi, MS is co-founder and managing partner at Incept LLC., a health sciences and medical development company. More specifically, Incept focuses on the unmet needs in the medical device industry and then creating valuable medical device companies from these needs. Incept has to-date, started ten companies: Confluent Surgical, Inc., Embolic Protection, Inc., MarketRx, Inc., AccessClosure, Inc., Ostial Corp., Sadra Medical, Inc., Occular Therapeutix, Inc., Hotspur, Inc., NextPlane, Inc., and Claret Medical, Inc., all of which Mr. Khosravi has served in a management and leadership role.

Previously, Mr. Khosravi served on the board of Kerberos Proximal Solutions, Inc. (acquired by FoxHollow, Inc. in 2006), a medical device company dedicated to developing an innovative mechanical thrombectomy device. He also served on the board of Advanced Stent Technologies, Inc. (acquired by Boston Scientific, Corp. in 2004), a development stage company focused on treatment of bifurcation vascular diseases. Mr. Khosravi was founder, chairman, and chief technical officer of EndoTex Interventional Systems, Inc. (acquired by Boston Scientific Corp. in 2007), a company in the carotid Stent Market. Read More

Tara Butler, MD came to Ascension Ventures in 2002 after completing a residency in obstetrics and gynecology at Washington University in St. Louis. She primarily focuses on investments in the medical device and diagnostics sector. Tara has been a board member or observer at several Ascension Ventures portfolio companies, including Apama Medical, Augmenix, CHF Solutions, Confluent Surgical, CSA Medical, HemoSphere, Interventional Spine, ISTO Technologies, Ivantis, MindFrame, Neurolutions, Novasys, Ocular Therapeutix, OptiScan Biomedical, PathoGenetix, Stereotaxis (NASD:STXS), and TomoTherapy (NASD:TOMO). Prior to attending medical school, she held positions in business development at Medtronic, in finance at Honeywell and as a laboratory research assistant at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine.

She holds a BS in Economics and an MBA from the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania, and a Doctor of Medicine from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine.

Darshana Zaveri, MPA, MS is a General Partner of Catalyst Health Ventures, a venture capital fund focused on investments in the medical technology sector. Darshana is actively involved in all aspects of Fund Management including Investments and Capital Raising. She led Catalyst’s investments in Augmenix, Lantos Technologies, nVision Medical, Maxwell Health, Aria CV and Hepregen. She currently represents Catalyst on the Boards of Lantos (past Chair), nVision, Aria CV, Augmenix and Maxwell Health and was previously actively involved with portfolio company Allegro Diagnostics (acquired by Veracyte Inc.). Darshana is also currently serving as CEO of Lantos Technologies.

Darshana brings to Catalyst over a decade of experience in the health care and Life Science Industries. Prior to Catalyst, she was an Investigator at Vertex Pharmaceuticals and an integral part of the drug development programs in oncology, metabolic disease, and immunology. Previously she worked at Genome Therapeutics, a Massachusetts-based biotechnology company, at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute and completed an internship at the United Nations. She has authored several publications and scientific journal articles and currently serves as a Catalyst of the Deshpande Center for Technological Innovation at MIT.

Darshana received an MPA from Harvard University, a Master in Cell and Molecular Biology from Boston University, and a BS in Biochemistry from Bombay University in Bombay, India.

Serge Bhachu is the Managing Director of Sparta Group LLC, a private investment office. In this role he is responsible for overseeing investment and all other functions for the office. Serge also serves as Chief Financial Officer of the Deshpande Foundation. He is on the board of Virtudent, Entrepreneurship For All, and the Deshpande Foundation trust, and board observer for Augmenix, Axtria, and Instylla. Serge has held senior executive positions in both large organizations and start-up companies, spanning investment, legal, operations and financial management roles. Serge received a Bachelor of Arts in Economics from Clark University and a Juris Doctor from the Boston University School of Law.